Election night: What to expect

It’s Election Day! You can still vote until 8pm. You can go to City Hall and register and vote. Every vote will count in this close election.

At the traditional Election Day lunch at John’s Grill (thanks, John Konstin, for feeding us all), there was speculation but nobody had any real predictions for the mayor’s race. Sup. London Breed showed up; so did Angela Alioto and Amy Farah Weiss. The other candidates were talking to voters (there was not, I suspect, a single undecided vote in that packed house).

London Breed at the Election Day lunch: Does she get the conservative vote?

Here’s what we can expect locally:

As of this morning, 80,643 vote-by-mail ballots had arrived at the Department of Elections, and 79,945 were accepted. That’s a little low.

The highest turnout so far is D8, where there’s a race for district supervisor; 10,690 ballots have already been turned in there.

The other districts with high response: D5, which always turns out (and is home district to Sup. London Breed) and D7 and D2, which also traditionally have high VBM.

According to Calvin Welch, who has been watching local politics for a very long time,

of the first vote counted some 29% will be from “conservative” districts 2,4 and 7, 39% will be from left /liberal districts 5,6,8 and 9, and some 32% will be from “swing” districts 1,3 10 and 11.

campaign number-crunchers told us two-thirds [of the VBM] hailed from San Franciscans aged 50 or more, a quarter of them are Chinese, and 55 percent own their homes. That’s a pretty moderate-leaning group.

Moderate to conservative, actually – and one of the questions in this race is who the conservatives will vote for. Angela Alioto has gone out of her way to court that vote (today she told me that she was going to win – “just wait for the Republican and Catholic votes to come in.”) But I don’t think she breaks 10 percent. Who else gets that vote? And who gets Alioto’s Number Two votes – if those voters even choose a Number Two?

When the first results show up around 8:45, we will see.

The strong D8 vote probably helps Leno, who once represented that district and is very popular there. The strong D5 vote may help Breed – but that’s one of the city’s most progressive districts, and there will be strong Kim and Leno votes there.

If Breed is ahead by less than five points in the first round, it’s going to a long night – and we probably won’t know who the next mayor is for several days.

Check back here and follow us on Twitter (@48hills) for updates all evening.